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Solomons

Meet Pastor Titus Luther, Senior Pastor of Gospel Light Foursquare Church and the National Leader of the Solomon Islands Foursquare Church. He is a husband and father of 6 kids. Of course if you want to include the many, many young people he “fathers” the number quickly goes to the hundreds.

Titus came to Solomon Islands six years ago to plant a church in Honiara, Guadalcanal, the capital of SI. In his native Papua New Guinea, he was the national youth director. So when he arrived he was immediately drawn to the street kids who live in Honiara, one of the poorest cities in the world. It reminds Jim and me a lot of Haiti without the earthquake. Street kids are the unwanted children who grow up mostly illiterate on the streets scrounging out a living. He opened a youth center to feed the kids and share the Gospel. Many receive Jesus. Of those who he saw promise, he invited them to his Institute (there are about 100 here now). The Institute is a few acres of mostly undeveloped land far from the streets of the city. The men and women who come here are trained in reading, writing, and most importantly, the Word of God. In their second year they go to one of the over 300 inhabited Solomon Islands to share Jesus. When they finally graduate, many of them will go to these islands to live and to plant churches. Others may continue for a higher education.

Jim Pringle and I arrived on Sunday and have been hard at work since. The folks from the church were still socially gathering. Children were everywhere (he also has a primary school – K-6 – that has about 85 kids. He has been given government approval (the Prime Minister of SI has recognized the work of the school and has come to the last two graduations. In fact, the young men and women from the Institute are sought by local businesses for work because of their work ethic and integrity, a reflection of the dedication of Titus to these kids.

Daily life is considerably consumed with getting water. A shallow well with swampy water provides everything, including drinking and cooking water (they boil the water before using). They bring it up by the bucket load. There are people there from dawn to dusk. The water tower they constructed for us will have to be raised another 15 feet. We asked them to drill a deep well before we arrived and it is finished and able to provide 25 gallons per minute. Jim and I will be working with them to provide a complete campus water system – clean and filtered – that will last far into the future needs they are projecting. It will provide running water to every corner of the campus.

Pray that our time and productivity will be multiplied. This is an amazing work and great to be a part of. Titus has repeatedly thanked us profusely for the impact this will have on his work here.